Image: Daniel Rosehill [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0], via Flickr
Government urged to extend British Academy fellowship programme set up in response to Ukraine war
Calls are growing for the government to fund a research sanctuary programme for researchers in Gaza, as it did for Ukrainian academics in 2022.
The government provided nearly £13 million for a researchers-at-risk scheme, which brought around 180 Ukrainians to the UK on two-year fellowships. The scheme, which closed early last year, was run by the British Academy and the Council for At-Risk Academics with funding from the former business department and the foreign office.
On 7 May, 102 fellows of the British Academy along with 48 more academics called on both the government and the British Academy to “do more to help Palestinian academics whose universities and higher education infrastructure have been devastated by the war in Gaza”.
Susan Bruce, a professor of English at the University of Keele, said: “The extension of the researchers at risk scheme would send a positive message to the world about the UK’s commitment to reconstruction when the conflict finally ends.”
British Academy support
The British Academy told Research Professional News it has also been asking the government for fresh funding. A spokesperson said the Academy believes the scheme “should be available to all researchers at risk” but that the current funding “is given to us for Ukrainian academics only”.
“We have been working hard to secure funding to be able to respond to crises globally, including the Middle East,” the spokesperson said, but added that so far the attempt has not been successful.
Scheme ‘under close review’
The call from academics follows an Early Day Motion tabled on 13 March by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas to renew funding for the researchers-at-risk programme to help Palestinians.
The motion, which has attracted 19 signatures, “observes that every higher education institution in Gaza has been destroyed or severely damaged during the war”.
In response to a parliamentary question from Labour MP Kerry McCarthy on whether the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology had considered extending the researchers at risk scheme, the science minister Andrew Griffith said on 15 April that the department is “keeping the programme…under close review”.
The science department told RPN that its position has not changed since then.